All five nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA have now been detected in meteorite samples, according to a study published yesterday (April 26) in Nature Communications. The work used recently developed techniques to identify not only adenine and guanine—which had previously been identified in samples from some of the same meteorites—but also cytosine, uracil, and thymine, supporting the idea that the precursors of life could have come from space.
The work “provides additional support for the theory that the delivery of these compounds to Earth by meteorites may have played a role in the emergence of genetic functions for early life,” study coauthor Daniel Glavin, an astrobiologist at NASA, which supplied one of three meteorites used in the study, tells Chemistry World.
To see whether nucleobases could form under extraterrestrial conditions, the researchers also ran “laboratory experiments simulating photochemical reactions in the interstellar medium,” Glavin tells Chemistry World. They ...
